How to Install Ubuntu 16.10/16.04 Alongside With Windows 10 or 8 in Dual-Boot

Ubuntu 16.10 released with a support of 9 months until July 2017 and Ubuntu 16.04 has been released in wild by Canonical with a life circle of 5 years support.

This tutorial will guide you on how you can perform the installation of Ubuntu 16.10 and Ubuntu 16.04 in dual-boot with a Microsoft Operating System on machines that come pre-installed with Windows 10.

This guide assumes that your machine comes pre-installed with Windows 10 OS or an older version of Microsoft Windows, such as Windows 8.1 or 8.

In case your hardware uses UEFI then you should modify the EFI settings and disable Secure Boot feature.

If your computer has no other Operating System already installed and you plan to use a Windows variant alongside Ubuntu 16.04/16.10, you should first install Microsoft Windows and then proceed with Ubuntu 16.04 installation.

In this particular case, on Windows installation steps, when formatting the hard disk, you should allocate a free space on the disk with at least 20 GB in size in order use it later as a partition for Ubuntu installation.

Requirements

Download Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 16.10 ISO Image as per your system architecture using following link:

Step 1: Prepare Windows Machine for Dual-Boot

1. The first thing you need to take care is to create a free space on the computer hard disk in case the system is installed on a single partition.

Login to your Windows machine with an administrative account and right click on the Start Menu->Command Prompt (Admin) in order to enter Windows Command Line.

Preparing Windows for Dual-Boot with Ubuntu 16.04

2. Once in CLI, type diskmgmt.msc on prompt and the Disk Management utility should open. From here, right click on C: partition and select Shrink Volume in order to resize the partition.

C:\Windows\system32\>diskmgmt.msc

Shrink Volume to Resize Partition

3. On Shrink C: enter a value on space to shrink in MB (use at least 20000 MB depending on the C: partition size) and hit Shrink to start partition resize as illustrated below (the value of space shrink from below image is lower and only used for demonstration purposes).

Once the space has been resized you will see a new unallocated space on the hard drive. Leave it as default and reboot the computer in order to proceed with Ubuntu 16.04 installation.

Create Windows Partition for Ubuntu 16.04 Installation

Windows Partition for Dual Boot Ubuntu 16.04

Step 2: Install Ubuntu 16.04 with Windows Dual-Boot

4. Now it’s time to install Ubuntu 16.04. Go the download link from the topic description and grab Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 ISO image.

Burn the image to a DVD or create a bootable USB stick using a utility such as Universal USB Installer (BIOS compatible) or Rufus (UEFI compatible).

Place the USB stick or DVD in the appropriate drive, reboot the machine and instruct the BIOS/UEFI to boot-up from the DVD/USB by pressing a special function key (usually F12, F10 or F2 depending on the vendor specifications).

Once the media boot-up a new grub screen should appear on your monitor. From the menu select Install Ubuntu and hit Enter to continue.

Ubuntu 16.04 Install Boot Screen

5. After the boot media finishes loading into RAM you will end-up with a completely functional Ubuntu system running in live-mode.

On the Launcher hit on the second icon from top, Install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and the installer utility will start. Choose the language you wish to perform the installation and click on Continue button to proceed further.

7. Now it’s time to select an Installation Type. You can choose to Install Ubuntu alongside Windows Boot Manager, option that will automatically take care of all the partition steps.

Use this option if you don’t require personalized partition scheme. In case you want a custom partition layout, check the Something else option and hit on Continue button to proceed further.

The option Erase disk and install Ubuntu should be avoided on dual-boot because is potentially dangerous and will wipe out your disk.

Select Ubuntu 16.04 Installation Type

8. On this step we’ll create our custom partition layout for Ubuntu 16.04. On this guide will recommend that you create two partitions, one for root and the other for home accounts data and no partition for swap (use a swap partition only if you have limited RAM resources or you use a fast SSD).

To create the first partition, the root partition, select the free space (the shrink space from Windows created earlier) and hit on the + icon below. On partition settings use the following configurations and hit OK to apply changes:

Size = at least 20000 MB

Type for the new partition = Primary

Location for the new partition = Beginning

Use as = EXT4 journaling file system

Mount point = /

Create Ubuntu 16.04 Partitions

Create Root Partition for Ubuntu 16.04

Create the home partition using the same steps as above. Use all the available free space left for home partition size. The partition settings should look like this:

Size = all remaining free space

Type for the new partition = Primary

Location for the new partition = Beginning

Use as = EXT4 journaling file system

Mount point = /home

Create Home Partition for Ubuntu 16.04

9. When finished, hit the Install Now button in order to apply changes to disk and start the installation process.

A pop-up window should appear to inform you about swap space. Ignore the alert by pressing on Continue button.

Next a new pop-up window will ask you if you agree with committing changes to disk. Hit Continue to write changes to disk and the installation process will now start.

Confirm Partition Changes

Confirm Write Changes to Disk

10. On the next screen adjust your machine physical location by selecting a city nearby from the map. When done hit Continue to move ahead.

Select Your City Location

11. Next, select your keyboard layout and click on Continue button.

Select Keyboard Layout

12. Pick up a username and password for your administrative sudo account, enter a descriptive name for your computer and hit Continue to finalize the installation.

This are all the settings required for customizing Ubuntu 16.04 installation. From here on the installation process will run automatically until it reaches the end.

Create User Account for Ubuntu 16.04

Ubuntu 16.04 Installation Process

13. After the installation process reaches its end hit on Restart Now button in order to complete the installation.

The machine will reboot into the Grub menu, where for ten seconds, you will be presented to choose what OS you wish to use further: Ubuntu 16.04 or Microsoft Windows.

Ubuntu is designated as default OS to boot from. Thus, just press Enter key or wait for those 10 seconds timeout to drain.

Ubuntu 16.04 Installation Completed

Grub Menu Select Ubuntu or Windows to Boot

14. After Ubuntu finishes loading, login with the credentials created during the installation process and enjoy it. Ubuntu 16.04 provides NTFS file system support automatically so you can access the files from Windows partitions just by clicking on the Windows volume.

Ubuntu 16.04 Login

Access Windows Partitions from Ubuntu 16.04

That’s it! In case you need to switch back to Windows, just reboot the computer and select Windows from the Grub menu.

304 Responses

I followed these steps exactly. The problem I have is that when my computer boots, it boots straight into windows and gives me no choice of OS. I can hit the F11 key on boot up and select which OS to run, however I’d have to do this manually every time.

In boot options in my BIOS where I can select boot priorities, there is no option to select Ubuntu. I’m at the end of the road with this, if there’s anything that can help I’d be eternally grateful.

Thanks, Matei, best instructions I’ve found yet. But during installation I ran into this warning to “Force UEFI Installation” on a Dell 7520 that already has Win 10 on it: “This machine’s firmware has started the installer in UEFI mode, but it looks like there may be existing operating systems already installed using BIOS compatibility mode.

If you continue in UEFI mode, it might be difficult to reboot the machine into any BIOS-mode OS later. If you wish to install UEFI mode and don’t care about keeping the ability to boot one of the existing systems, you have the option to force here.”

Of course I want to retain the ability to boot into Windows, but after choosing NOT to continue in UEFI mode, I completed the Ubuntu install, only to find that BIOS couldn’t find it! My laptop now only sees the Win 10 OS, and I can’t boot into Linux.

Any idea where I went wrong? (I’m trying to install on a second drive…. NOT onto the same drive as Win is installed on)

Hello, that’s a good explanation, but initially I am not getting the option for “Instal Ubuntu alongside windows” and in “something else“, it is not showing me free space, please suggest me on this..!!

On UEFI installed machines, the disk is automatically partitioned with GPT partition scheme. Ubuntu installation must be performed from UEFI in this case. In Legacy Mode you can try to change HDD partition table from MBR to GPT or recreate partitions, with the second partition as extended.

Hi! First of all, great tutorial, thanks for sharing. I have a problem in step 8 second part, after creating the root partition the volume that’s left changes from “free space” to “unusable” and I’m not longer able to click the + button to create the home partition.

Do you know why this may be happening? any ideas on how to solve it? Appreciate the help.